Preview — Postcapitalism
by Paul Mason

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

From Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, Postcapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change, and how we can build a more equal society.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent historyFrom Paul Mason, the award-winning Channel 4 presenter, Postcapitalism is a guide to our era of seismic economic change, and how we can build a more equal society.

Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.

At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing.. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership, lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism.

In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change....more

Community Reviews

I deliberately read ‘Postcapitalism’ quite slowly, as it deserves considerable thought. I find it striking that such a book was written by a journalist, in an engagingly journalistic style, rather than an academic or that ambiguous figure in between, a public intellectual. Although perhaps Paul Mason falls into the latter category? I’m not sure. Anyway, he isn’t an economist, and I think this book demonstrates quite clearly why that enables him to think beyond neoliberalism. As an aside, a few dI deliberately read ‘Postcapitalism’ quite slowly, as it deserves considerable thought. I find it striking that such a book was written by a journalist, in an engagingly journalistic style, rather than an academic or that ambiguous figure in between, a public intellectual. Although perhaps Paul Mason falls into the latter category? I’m not sure. Anyway, he isn’t an economist, and I think this book demonstrates quite clearly why that enables him to think beyond neoliberalism. As an aside, a few days ago I was asked about my disciplinary background in a job interview. I answered that I’d studied economics and had a grounding in micro and macro, but hastened to add that I was not an economist. As Mason points out, to be an economist, or even a student of economics, today is to be an evangelist of neoliberal ideology.

Rather to my amusement, I found that Mason’s approach to explaining his notion of postcapitalism reminded me a little of Slavoj Žižek, except with a diametrically opposite prose style. Like Žižek, Mason has picked through various theorists and writers of the last 200 years, extracted what he found most convincing, and stitched it together loosely. He takes the reader through Kondratieff cycles (which I vaguely remember from my undergraduate days), elements of Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (which I found fascinating), and a Soviet economist called Bogdanov (whose novel, Red Star, I’ve been meaning to read for years). From these building blocks, he constructs a loose theory of capitalism’s collapse in the face of the information economy, recounting the history of industrialisation in the process.

Probably the most critical observation to this theory is that information now forms a huge and growing proportion of the goods and services that make up GDP. Yet it is cannot be priced using standard economic theory, which states that a market is in equilibrium when marginal cost equals marginal benefit. Information has zero marginal cost, as it can be copied infinitely, the only cost involved being the electricity this requires. Moreover, the category of information keeps expanding, to include music, books, films, TV shows, patterns and designs to make or do just about any other thing. Whilst there is obviously a cost to producing this information, that is generally also falling. Only legal structures prevent everyone with an internet connection being able to listen to practically every song, watch practically every film, and read practically every book ever created. Realistically, everyone willing to pirate already does. Business models based on defending copyright are fighting a losing battle, as internet connections get faster, storage cheaper, and files quality better. I have long blamed my comfort with media piracy on A-level economics, which helpfully taught me that a good with zero marginal cost should also be priced at zero. Mason notes that the so-called ‘Internet of Things’ (a concept I am admittedly somewhat dubious of) will expand both the volume and proportion of information in our goods and services. At the moment, the information that we passively create by browsing the web (which certainly feels like a passive activity much of the time) is controlled by state and private monopolies; google and the NSA, broadly. The argument here is all such information should be made more public, in order that it can be used to drive innovation.

I think there is a lot more to be written just on that one point, never mind the many others this book makes, however Mason makes a strong start. The question he is really posing, it seems to me, is whether technology breaking neoliberalism will result in technology breaking capitalism entirely. Postcapitalism strikes me as somewhat like postmodernism - highly contingent, depending on the commentator and discipline under discussion. By this I mean that Mason is advocating a sort of mixed economy, in which information is set free to encourage innovation and the productivity gains of automation are used to provide a basic income for all, yet markets and governments still fit together somewhere. In some ways such proposals aren’t novel, as many have advocated similar things before. Yet this is the first book that I’ve read to propose that a new, albeit vague, kind of capitalism is not only possible but inevitable, as neoliberalism’s contradictions are consuming it. Moreover, it deploys Marx effectively to support the central thesis.

In a 400 page book one cannot expect to find the answer to every question, however there was one relative omission that really struck me: democracy. This makes ‘Postcapitalism’ a striking mirror to The End of History and the Last Man, which it is essentially refuting. Fukuyama spends most of his book on arguments for democracy’s lasting survival, apparently thinking that free market capitalism more or less justifies its own immortality. Mason, meanwhile, spends considerable time on the structural weaknesses of free market capitalism, only occasionally touching on the role of the state and governance. Indeed, towards the end of the book the ‘withering away’ of the state, after Marx, is envisaged. I think there is a lot more to be said here, although it’s fair enough that there wasn’t space in the book. Most notably, I wonder about the ways in which an information-based economy facilitates and obscures democratic decision-making. At present, the 24-hour news cycle and culture of social media outrage creates an instantaneity that is also intensely volatile. How can a democratic process adequately respond to a constant stream of conflicting, changing information? At present a great deal of this responsiveness is entrusted to markets and citizens are told that their power lies in consumption choices. Postcapitalism envisages a much smaller role for markets and a greater role for collaboration. Whilst evidently this would redistribute power very significantly, the role of the state would become much more important, at least initially. Mason strongly argues that natural monopolies such as utilities should be nationalised, although presumably the rise of information could also improve their productivity.

I am meandering here, as this book is extremely thought-provoking. The question I’m trying to articulate is something like: is access to information sufficient for transparency and accountability? Can it create parallel means of governance (as Mason seems to envisage) that reduces the need for a centralised state as currently exists? Personally I rather doubt it, as information is no more neutral as a means of production than labour or capital. Whilst access to it is a form of power, wider access doesn't remove the power of those who process the information and write the algorithms that determine what action is taken in response to it. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult to say these days what is personal data and what isn’t. ‘Big data’ is surely just millions of pieces of personal information aggregated together. Thus, freeing some forms of information intended to be public (music, films, books) is a very different matter to freeing information that those creating it are barely aware of (medical data, shopping habits, how an office printer is used). There is the obvious response of anonymising the data, then the equally obvious rejoinder of whether that is ever truly possible when every detail of life is recorded in some device. The thought experiment of what if all information really was freely available, somehow, really makes you aware of how many monopolies defend it at present (amazon, google, facebook, et al). Quite apart from the resistance such companies would put up to transparency, the implications are dizzying. Increasing technological innovation is the very least of them. Do you want to know the number of times you have bought the same sandwich from Tesco? How would you feel about the knowledge of how much Tesco profited over years from just those sandwich purchases? If you could know the exact supply chain that produced your sandwich, indeed all your purchases, could you cope with all that information? Or is it easier to proceed on the basis of habit, given the exhaustion of information overload? If you could find information on everything, how would you prioritise? How would you find the energy to care about anything if you knew everything? Yet I agree with Mason that the current monopolistic situation is fragile and unsustainable.

I should try and get to the point here. I don’t agree with the subtitle of this book, ‘A guide to our future’. Rather, it is an original analysis of our present and its instabilities. Mason is trying to provide a positive, albeit vague, vision for the future (although I note he uses the term ‘utopian’ in an inconsistent and ambivalent fashion), to inspire something beyond the fatalism of There Is No Alternative. In my view, though, the value of the book is its original critique of neoliberal economic theory and attempt to posit new theories. Moreover, it spends quite a lot of time on history. As such, it reads well with The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which critiques neoliberalism on a very practical, international basis.

I hope that ‘Postcapitalism’ is widely read, as it raises vitally important issues (international debt, demographic timebombs, and climate change, amongst others). Also, I want to discuss it with people. I agree with Mason’s economic arguments as to why neoliberal capitalism is doomed, however a lot more thought is required to come up with a replacement for it. Mason doesn’t claim to have the answers, but he is definitely asking the right questions....more

There are books we want to read, books we think we ought to read, and books we need to read. This one falls in the latter category, along with Naomi Klein's 'This Changes Everything' and George Monbiot's 'Rewilding' - actually, anything by either of these authors.

Paul Mason is a man for our time. He has reported from all the major political events of the past years and can tell us what was happening behind the scenes - from the ECB's annihilation of Greece for having the temerity to vote in anThere are books we want to read, books we think we ought to read, and books we need to read. This one falls in the latter category, along with Naomi Klein's 'This Changes Everything' and George Monbiot's 'Rewilding' - actually, anything by either of these authors.

Paul Mason is a man for our time. He has reported from all the major political events of the past years and can tell us what was happening behind the scenes - from the ECB's annihilation of Greece for having the temerity to vote in an anti-austerity government to the left-wing plebian upsurge in Scotland that very nearly broke away from the austerity model.

Reading this in the week of the Labour conference with Jeremy Corbyn facing the tide of right wing hysteria and the frantic machinations of the neoliberals is fascinating. What Mason has done is put modern economic systems into perspective in a human way, so that we can see why the current system is failing and what *might* come after it. If you're not ready to opt out of capitalism by the end, you haven't been paying attention.

But his ideas of how we might structure a sustainable future require all of us working together - which is why it's a must-read. Go for it. ...more

Paul Mason is that rare creature: a left-wing optimist. He isn’t mourning the death of labor power or the rise of machines. That’s because the two have converged to kill off capitalism. Well, nearly. The British journalist reckons we are close enough to a new order that he has eschewed the hyphen in the title of his new book, “Postcapitalism.”

Mason is right to question whether our current system can handle the looming prospects of climate change, long-term wage stagnation and soverBy Kate Duguid

Paul Mason is that rare creature: a left-wing optimist. He isn’t mourning the death of labor power or the rise of machines. That’s because the two have converged to kill off capitalism. Well, nearly. The British journalist reckons we are close enough to a new order that he has eschewed the hyphen in the title of his new book, “Postcapitalism.”

Mason is right to question whether our current system can handle the looming prospects of climate change, long-term wage stagnation and sovereign debt crises. But his argument that information technology has halted the march of global capital is less convincing.

The self-described “Guide to Our Future” has a clear destination: 21st-century socialism. The prescription is partly heterodox - free public goods and a guaranteed basic income – and partly open-source evangelism. But Mason won’t say exactly how to get there, who’s taking us or how we’ll pay for all the free stuff.

Ever since Karl Marx first spelled out the inherent contradictions he believed would lead to capitalism’s inexorable demise, the system has defied predictions of imminent collapse. It has adapted to downturns and demographic shifts. Companies have leveraged technology to create new markets even as other industries dissolved. But Mason argues that this chaotic process of constant renewal is now at an end because of two factors: the near-obliteration of labor power and the nature of the information economy.

His labor argument is fairly straightforward. When workers had bargaining power, workplace innovations created growth. If owners of capital tried to cut costs by exploiting employees, resistance to wage suppression forced them to pioneer new business models instead. But the decline of workers’ power since the 1980s has led to wage stagnation and low-value production in the developed world, stalling capitalist ingenuity.

It’s a stretch to state that the era which gave us the iPhone hasn’t been innovative. But making machines doesn’t matter so much to Mason. In the information technology economy, the real value isn’t in the device but in the knowledge it collects. Though Google’s main product is its search engine, the company derives its worth from the data that users provide when searching for stuff online.

The marginal cost of these digital packets is close to zero. But Google can profit off that information because intellectual property laws allow the company to own it and not share it publicly. The same goes for Apple and its 99 cent digital music downloads.

In other words, capitalist ownership makes information - the basic resource of our current economy - artificially scarce even though it is infinitely reproducible. The contradiction of attempting to control resources that are abundant and created by input from the public is one that capitalism can’t solve. For Mason, this threatens the whole system.

He points to open-source projects like Wikipedia or Linux as alternatives to corporate control. The dream is that these projects are the vanguards for a whole system of collaborative projects, powered by the voluntary labor of the revolutionary class. Yet such examples of online altruism are vastly outnumbered by hyper-capitalist Silicon Valley startups that have sucked up billions of dollars of investment by promising to disrupt industries from taxi-hailing to hotels.

Mason’s agents of change, the digitally networked and highly educated, may be creating value for free every time they share a video on Facebook or perform a Google search. But that loosening of the relationship between wages and labor looks like an adaptation rather than a subversion of capitalism. Claims that the influx of technology into the workplace has decreased the need for human labor also don’t stand up to scrutiny. U.S. labor productivity hasn’t spiked in the past two decades, perhaps because offshore workers are still cheaper than some machines, or because corporate earnings are returned to shareholders rather than reinvested.

Truly cooperative alternatives to corporate distribution may remain sparse until robots really do begin to save us some labor time. Even then, it’s an open question whether our connectedness and high levels of education will provoke public intolerance for stagnation, exploitation and climate destruction. And if they do, the path from online solidarity doesn’t lead straight to open-source sharing. In the era of Edward Snowden, widespread publication of personal data may be a hard sell.

“Postcapitalism” doesn’t look like the blueprint for whatever follows the current phase of capitalism, but its urgency in the face of potentially apocalyptic change is important in itself....more

This really was a positive external shock to my thinking, reviving my once lost interest in socioeconomical litterature by building a well-thought-out (and credibly materialitsic) bridge between historical Marxism and ahistorical ”mainstream” economics. True to the spirit of the classical critics of capitalism, the book does not just describe the world as it is and has been, but also outlines a transitional program of action out of current crises looming above humanity. Much to think of for a loThis really was a positive external shock to my thinking, reviving my once lost interest in socioeconomical litterature by building a well-thought-out (and credibly materialitsic) bridge between historical Marxism and ahistorical ”mainstream” economics. True to the spirit of the classical critics of capitalism, the book does not just describe the world as it is and has been, but also outlines a transitional program of action out of current crises looming above humanity. Much to think of for a long time....more

Very good effort by the author to recap our modern history and how neoliberalism came into play.However, I wouldn't call it a Guide to Our Future as he barely ever says HOW we could do it, but merely mentions the obvious.I gave it 2 stars as its title was very misleading. I'd start by reading the last chapter first to see the author's point of view, but the first chapters are very interesting economic history.

Paul Mason’s 2015 book, Postcapitalism A Guide to Our Future, provides a striking visualization of a possible exit from the disasters of our current capitalist world system to something else: a more life-affirming, empathetic, creativity-fostering and fun world of cooperative progress. But before we get there, we need to manage a couple of problems that capitalism has created for us which present, as the title to Mason’s penultimate chapter suggests, a rational case for panic. And mind you, thisPaul Mason’s 2015 book, Postcapitalism A Guide to Our Future, provides a striking visualization of a possible exit from the disasters of our current capitalist world system to something else: a more life-affirming, empathetic, creativity-fostering and fun world of cooperative progress. But before we get there, we need to manage a couple of problems that capitalism has created for us which present, as the title to Mason’s penultimate chapter suggests, a rational case for panic. And mind you, this book was published before the United States elected a mentally disordered narcissist with the vocabulary of a 4-year old as its President. These problems are, of course: climate change, debt overhang, demographic dynamics and automation.

The picture that Mason paints is starkly visible at the beginning of the twenty-first century. How will we possibly exit from an apparently inevitable conveyor belt to carbon pollution oblivion? How will an aging population maintain social peace? How will the reign of fiat money end? How will we “earn a living” when information and the products made from information have “zero marginal cost?” For me Mason's book is marred by a really irrelevant homage to Marx’s labour theory of value. Irrelevant because what Mason visualizes is closer to the end visualized in Keynes’s “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” than that in Capital. It is actually closer to the picture that a young Marx painted in the Grundrisse in the famous “Fragment on Capital” and then ignored or abandoned in Capital. This is the problem that if machines become fully implemented in our economy there becomes less and less need for the labour that Marx and Mason imagine is the source of value. But let’s get to those problems that capitalism has thrown at us first.

Climate Change

The scariest problem is clearly climate change. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, our climate has warmed by approximately one degree Centigrade since the beginning of the twentieth century. That is nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The World Resources Institute projects that 90% of coral reefs will be in danger by 2030 and all of them by 2050, due to ocean warming and acidification. Sea level rise is has recently been projected at over 8 feet by 2100 resulting from melting of land ice in the polar regions. These changes will clearly have devastating effects the lives of those that follow us. The oceans provide livelihood for tens of millions of us. Our coastal cities will need total rebuilding or abandonment as sea levels rise. These problems are already happening. What can be done to prevent them from doing the most damage?

The average carbon dioxide concentration in our planet’s atmosphere just reached 400 parts per million (See here.) US Department of Energy measurements of ice cores have shown that Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had not been greater than 300 parts per million for 800,000 years prior to 1950. Almost all climate scientists that are not working for the fossil fuel industry understand that global warming, sea level rise and ocean acidification are due to burning of fossil fuels which transform reduced carbon buried millions of years ago into carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. It is the burning of fossil fuel that causes global warming, sea level rise and ocean acidification. There is no other cause that accounts for the effects that we have seen. (See the IPCC reports, for example, or US EPA pages put together before they are deleted by the Trump administration.)

This is a really scary prospect and it is clear that capitalism is the reason it is so difficult to manage. Why? Simply because capitalism is based on a system of "free trade" and "free enterprise" that ignores "externalities." In a pure capitalist state, there is no penalty for dumping pollution into the commons. In such a world, the capitalist makes a rational case that the long-term damage done to others will not come back to harm him, leaving him free to enjoy the profits from his investments in the short term. Of course, as Karl Polanyi made clear, such pure capitalism could not long exist. The horrors of Dickens's Victorian Age for the poor have since his time been ameliorated to some extent by countervailing actions in the public interest by governments. The problem with climate change is that the interventions required to curb it are staunchly resisted by the owners of fossil fuel companies who have in the past been subsidized by these same governments and have sufficient power to influence these governments to not take actions that clearly are needed to avert catastrophe.

Mason has a clear vision of the problem. He references the International Energy Administration, which writes,

"Policy choices and market developments that bring the share of fossil fuels in primary energy demand down to just under three-quarters in 2040 are not enough to stem the rise in energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which grow by one-fifth. This puts the world on a path consistent with a long-term global average temperature increase of 3.6°C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that in order to limit this temperature increase to 2°C – the internationally agreed goal to avert the most severe and widespread implications of climate change – the world cannot emit more than around 1000 gigatonnes of CO2 from 2014 onwards. This entire budget will be used up by 2040 in our central scenario. Since emissions are not going to drop suddenly to zero once this point is reached, it is clear that the 2°C objective requires urgent action to steer the energy system on to a safer path."

The same IEA document estimates that world-wide fossil fuel subsidies in 2014 were $550 billion, four times more than subsidies for renewable energy sources.

So how will this possibly not end badly? Well, Mason is not convinced that "market solutions" like carbon taxes will be effective in ameliorating the worst consequences of climate change. What then? He writes,

"However, to meet the critical emissions targets we are going to have to use some centralized control. Governments - at state and regional level - will need to take control, and probably ownership, of all big carbon producers. As the energy distribution grid becomes 'smart', using technology to predict and balance supply with demand, it makes sense for the grid to be a public resource."

To this I say, "Here, here!," but based on personal experience, trying to convince a status quo clinging community to purchase its own electrical distribution infrastructure from a fossil fuel giant is a daunting task, and this much less than trying to socialize the failing energy companies themselves.

Demographics and Government Debt

Mason points out that the world's populations are aging fast.

"Globally, the population of older people to those of working age will increase. In 1950, 5 percent of the world's population was over sixty-five; by mid-twenty-first century it will be 17 percent. . . . the crucial problem is the age dependency ratio: the number of retired people compared to the number of those of working age. In Europe and Japan, there are currently three workers for every one retired person. By 2050 the ratio will be one-for-one. And though most developing countries will continue to have mainly young populations, China bucks the trend due to its one-child policy. By 2015 China will be the 'oldest' of the big economies in the world, with a projected median age of fifty-three."

The problem that Mason sees is that debt overhang caused, he thinks, by replacement of the gold standard by fiat money, has been part of a run-up in stock market pricing that cannot continue, resulting in great threat to pension funds. With an aging population and slower growth and a smaller workforce, this seems a spiral to impoverishment. With more than 50 percent of all private pension money invested in government debt, 40 percent of this foreign owned, "No matter how safe a company pension fund looks now, if 60 percent of all countries' bonds become junk - so that to lend to them becomes a crazy proposition - the private pension system will not survive." He says, "Are you panicking rationally, yet?"

The Four Waves and Wayward Bolsheviks

Mason is very fond of the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, executed by firing squad in his cell in a Stalinist prison in 1938. Kondradieff's

"real crime, in the eyes of his persecutors, was to think the unthinkable about capitalism: that instead of collapsing under crisis, capitalism generally adopts and mutates. In two pioneering works of data-mining he showed that, beyond short-term business cycles, there is evidence of a longer, fifty-year pattern whose turning points coincide with major structural changes within capitalism and major conflicts. Thus, these moments of extreme crisis and survival were not evidence of chaos but of order. Kondratieff was the first person to show the existence of long waves in economic history."

Mason sees four major waves in modern capitalism up to our current (fifth) era:

1) 1790-1848: The rise of the factory system with steam-powered machinery and canals. Peaking and then leading to the depression of the 1820s.2) 1848-1890s: Railways, the telegraph, ocean-going steamers, stable currencies and machine-produced machinery set the cycle into upwards motion. The wave peaks in the 1870s with financial crisis in the United States and a Long Depression (1873 - 96) in Europe.3) 1890s-1945: Heavy industry electrical engineering, scientific management and mass production start a new wave upwards. The break occurs at the end of the first world war leading to hyperinflation in Germany and the Great Depression.4) Late-1940s - 2008. Synthetic materials, mass consumer goods, factory automation, nuclear power and computing start lestrente glorieuses. The peak is the oil shock of 1973 leading to a period of instability.5) Late 1990s to present: Overlapping with the previous wave, network technology, mobile communications, truly global marketplace and information goods start a new wave upwards. But it this cycle has stalled, according to Mason, who thinks it will not lead to a new wave without a structural change to capitalism.

Mason is well schooled on Kondradieff and clearly admires him, along with other wayward Bolsheviks like Trotsky and Alexander Bogdanov. Bogdanov was the author of the "vintage sci-fi novel", Red Star, about a world on Mars where there are no labor shortages and no money, an early visualization of a postcapitalist world. He was a founding member of the Bolshevik party who was ousted after a disagreement with Lenin. Mason says of him, "Though he could not imagine a computer, he had imagined the kind of communism that society based on mental labor, sustainability and networked thought might produce." What a thought!

The Robots

A good part of Mason's book (in especially the important 5th chapter, "The Prophets of Postcapitalism") is devoted to visualizing what happens in our societies as machines become smarter and more capable to the extent that livelihoods based on unskilled human labor become untenable. Mason discusses important contributors to analysis of this subject by Peter Drucker, Schumpter, Paul Romer and Marx; especially an apparently anachronistic work of his youth, from the Grundrisse, "The Fragment on Machines." I will just discuss the latter. In this fragment, contained in the collection of notes for a future work, Marx addresses the question of what would happen if the tendency of machines to replace manual labour were extended to its logical conclusion: a world without labour.

This fragment starts out mixed up in Marx's current version of the labour theory of value, roughly that Ricardo's three factors of production, land, labour and capital, really boiled down to just labour (neglecting land, given by nature, the story goes) since it takes labour to make machines and build capital. But then Marx says,

"Further, in so far as machinery develops with the accumulation of society's science, of productive force generally, general social labour presents itself not in labour but in capital. The productive force of society is measured in fixed capital, exists there in its objective form; and, inversely, the productive force of capital grows with this general progress, which capital appropriates free of charge."

So what happens when information ("general progress") is free and machines can make themselves as well as all of the products that you may want? He says, "Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production." What replaces capital (and remember Marx still sees fixed capital as consisting of labour) is information, the general progress of science which can be owned by no one.

Mason sees this as somehow explained by the labour theory of value. I will address my puzzlement (and appreciation) at this in what follows.

The Labour Theory

Chapter 6 of Mason's book presents his extended remarks on the labour theory of value (LTV). In the words of Adam Smith,

"It was not by gold or by silver but by labour that all of the wealth of the world was originally purchased and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command."

Mason admits that Smith assumes that this labour-only theory of value applied to primitive societies and that in the newly industrializing world of Smith's late 18th century it was rather a combination of land, labour and capital that produced things of value. But he insists that Smith was rather being inconsistent. He gives the standard paragraph on Ricardo's theory saying that "Ricardo, who had witnessed the great upsurge of the factory system, ridiculed the idea that machines were the source of increased wealth. Machines merely transfer their value to the product; only labour adds new value."

Walras, who strongly contradicted Ricardo's LTV, is mentioned, not for his insistence on scarcity as the source of value which he (and I) think was his major contribution, but as one of the founders of the marginal utility school, which is the basis for most all of the economics that followed. Actually, Walras pointed out that Ricardo had admitted that scarcity had an impact on the value of certain types of products like works of art and fine wines. His critique of Ricardo was not that he was wrong for these types of products, but that he failed to see that scarcity is involved in the valuation of ALL products.

I have discussed the LTV in another post. The figure above comes from that post. The figure derives from Alfred Marshall's famous economics textbook. The various elements of the chart are explained in that prior post. I want to point out just one thing about this here. The chart shows a demand curve and supply curves assuming different types of return on scale. The important thing to note is that the pure LTV has a horizontal supply curve: the quantity of labour is the only thing that determines the cost of production, according to this pure theory. So the price that would be commanded in the market is indifferent to demand. If we were producing a product that no one wanted, the value of that product by the pure LTV would be the same as if it were in great demand. Clearly we know that this is not the case. A product that no one wants has no value, no matter how much labour went into making it. Marx, of course, was also aware of this objection. To get around it he developed an ingenious ruse (in my view), the concept of "socially necessary labour time." The basic idea is that the value of a product is the cost of labour to produce it only for products that have social value and includes all of the other things that went into its production. Except that Marx assumes that land has not value and that capital is only stored labour. So he gets back to labour as the source of all value. And a demand curve is smuggled in by the back door.

Mason explains socially necessary labour time by example:

"If we know what an hour of basic labour costs - in Bangladesh the minimum wage pays about 28 US cents an hour - we can express it in money. Here I will just stick to hours. Two things contribute to the value of a commodity: (a) the work done in the production process (which includes marketing, research, design, etc.) and (b) everything else (machinery, plant, raw materials, etc.) Both can be measured in terms of the amount of labour time they contain."

Again, the assumption here is that land, raw materials, energy and capital have no value since they are all assumed to be the product of labour alone. A brilliant idea, except that it seems to me to be a simple example of petitio principii, the fallacy of assuming as a premise a statement which has the same meaning as the conclusion. Labour is the source of all value, because labour is the source of all value. This apparent fallacy becomes all the more striking since elsewhere in Mason's book he uses the vocabulary of the marginal revolution in making his case that information processing presents us with the prospect of machines that last forever, as had been anticipated by Marx in the "Fragment on Machines." A result of that would be that more stuff created by those machines would have "zero marginal cost." Let's forget the irony, for the moment, of using insights from the marginal cost revolution of the late nineteenth century to defend a theory of value from the 18th century. But this is the crux of Mason's argument.

This is a really interesting, and accessible book about the economy, which focuses on realistic and serious solutions and hope for the Left when it comes to the economy. Mason, informed by his previous research into economics, uses a heterodox (in the most open sense of the word) analysis to demonstrate that neoclassical, classical Marxist and neoliberal economics will not be able to cope with the growth of intellectual, nonphysical and non-unionised precarious work, in combination with growingThis is a really interesting, and accessible book about the economy, which focuses on realistic and serious solutions and hope for the Left when it comes to the economy. Mason, informed by his previous research into economics, uses a heterodox (in the most open sense of the word) analysis to demonstrate that neoclassical, classical Marxist and neoliberal economics will not be able to cope with the growth of intellectual, nonphysical and non-unionised precarious work, in combination with growing problems related to climate change, war and cultural change.

Whilst Mason's insistence on computer communism and free sharing of information has been decried by critics like Douglas Murray as 'evidencing capitalism's dynamism' I think they misunderstand Mason's point. His point is that our value system is based on supply and demand, and when supply is infinite, yet demand changes, our notions of value with be fragmented in the postmodern world. Likewise, how on earth will capitalism work when third world labour is out of the question, for example we're already seeing labour costs in China and India going up, with work now being outsourced to rural Africa. This combined with the decline in American imperialism and influence will set a bomb to the crisis managers and status quo folks, which will lead to an inevitable change. To avoid these crises, Mason points to some realistic solutions to help set the stage for the Postcapitalist economy, such as getting rid of tax havens and introducting a universal basic income etc, pretty commonsense policies that can help avoid the coming crisis....more

This book was utter drivel. The author has no understanding of Marxism and incredibly premises much of his theory on a notion of "long-term" economic cycles; a fit-the-regression approach that offers no insight to understanding the complex relationships embodied in economies. I'm surprised he didn't commence his cyclical approach with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It's fascinating that bogus scholars such as Mr. Mason fit their own analyses to the brief data sets that they cite. Don't wThis book was utter drivel. The author has no understanding of Marxism and incredibly premises much of his theory on a notion of "long-term" economic cycles; a fit-the-regression approach that offers no insight to understanding the complex relationships embodied in economies. I'm surprised he didn't commence his cyclical approach with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It's fascinating that bogus scholars such as Mr. Mason fit their own analyses to the brief data sets that they cite. Don't waste your precious time....more

"It is absurd that we are capable of witnessing a 40,000-year-old system of gender oppression begin to dissolve before our eyes and yet still seeing the abolition of a 200-year-old economic system as an unrealistic utopia."

I rather enjoyed Postcapitalism for the potted history of left-wing thought, the use of "bullshit jobs" as a technical term, and the thought that if someone can find the political will we could find ourselves basically living in Star Trek. Viva la revolución.

“It hooked me at the first page!” “Ripped from the headlines!” “I couldn’t put it down!”

Hey wait a minute. Isn’t this supposed to be a review of an economics book? It is, and for me all those exclamations are true. In spite of the fact that I usually think economics is opaque and boring, I found this book to be positively riveting.

Like a lot of people, I’m worried about what’s going on in today’s world. The Arab Spring never bloomed; Occupy Wall Street petered out; the upcoming US election see“It hooked me at the first page!” “Ripped from the headlines!” “I couldn’t put it down!”

Hey wait a minute. Isn’t this supposed to be a review of an economics book? It is, and for me all those exclamations are true. In spite of the fact that I usually think economics is opaque and boring, I found this book to be positively riveting.

Like a lot of people, I’m worried about what’s going on in today’s world. The Arab Spring never bloomed; Occupy Wall Street petered out; the upcoming US election seems mired in chaos. We’re supposed to have recovered from the 2008 recession, but most new jobs can’t pay the bills. Every year breaks a record for world’s hottest, but certain political and corporate leaders still deny the existence of man-made climate change. Our population is getting older, poorer, and deeper in debt. What to do about the rising number of immigrants threatens many nations. So when Diane Rehm interviewed Paul Mason about his book, I decided to buy it. I wanted to hear more about his take on why we’re in this situation and what we can do about it.

Mason begins by reviewing humankind’s turbulent economic history: feudalism, industrial capitalism, the rise and destruction of the labor movement, the booms and busts of neoliberalism, the phenomenon of today’s “precariat.” These are the stressed-out people forced to work two jobs, who have lost or will never get a pension, who are acutely aware of how monopolies, outsourcing, or their company moving overseas make his or her job extremely precarious. Many workers are expected to be “at work” on their smartphones even when traveling or at home, and—even worse—are forced to “live the dream of the firm they work for.” In spite of our rising productivity, it’s now clear that actual wages are in decline, except for the 1%.

Mason then takes a look at how capitalism evolved in the last 200 years. It was mind-expanding for me to see how economic systems evolve and change just like human beings do. Today’s capitalism, the author points out, is in its fifth great wave. It’s trembling on the edge of becoming something new: postcapitalism.

Why is this happening? The answer, basically, is because our planet has to meet several great challenges it never faced before: climate change, ageing, the information network, and massive immigration. Business as usual won’t be able to meet these challenges.

So what will? What does this new mutation of capitalism look like? Mason says we’re already seeing it through models like the non-profit Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and Open Source. These share a communal nature, “free to use, but impossible to grab, own, and exploit.” Because of the unprecedented availability of free information on the internet, people are able to form artisanal local businesses, publish e-books, join global communities, share videos, get the equivalent of a free college degree. Information, one of the most valuable commodities available to human beings, isn’t scare anymore, but free to all.

Like any great novel, this book builds and builds into an explosive climax. Using the nitty-gritty facts of history and economics, Mason reveals what postcapitalism can mean to us and our future.

There’s tons more in in this book that I can’t even begin to deal with here. Whenever I read a book I think I’m going to review, I jot down notes: what grabs me, what new thing I learn, how it coincides with what I’ve noticed in the world and why it bothers me or gives me hope. For this book, I took six pages of notes. It’s hard to review a book in which you struggle to assimilate a new idea when, on the next page, the author is already using the new idea as the foundation for yet another new idea.

This book isn’t an easy read, but boy is it an exhilarating ride! At the end—when we finally get the answer to the question “who’s going to save us?”—I actually yelled Yay!

Though I have a lot of points of disagreement with the author, I still think this is an important book that will give any reader the impetus to question many of the assumptions that underlie the politics of the current model of economics - for economics is really just a branch of politics.

My background is in hard science. I did Astronomy for my first degree and Computing for my masters - so I find the 'hand-waving' pretend maths of eA must-read view of economic history and our economic future.

Though I have a lot of points of disagreement with the author, I still think this is an important book that will give any reader the impetus to question many of the assumptions that underlie the politics of the current model of economics - for economics is really just a branch of politics.

My background is in hard science. I did Astronomy for my first degree and Computing for my masters - so I find the 'hand-waving' pretend maths of economics a bit tiresome. And so it is with this book. Paul Mason seems to be from a Marxist background (nothing wrong with that!) and tries (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) to rehabilitate Marxism as a description for the current economic situation.

Part one of the book is economic history, Part two is mostly his treatment of technical and scientific progress and part three is about how a post-capitalist economy might work.

In many ways I disagree with the first two parts and agree with the third - but it is reading the first two parts that gives me the most fun - they are a great stimulus to thought.

His concept is that capitalism contains multiple 'cycles' of activity (the 'boom' and 'bust' we're so familiar with) and we are just about to hit the downturn of the latest one. Well I'm pretty sure that you can see cycles in any data at all - I've programmed forecasting system several times and I know you can find completely meaningless patterns in random data. Without an underlying theory that links properly with the outputs, it doesn't really mean much.

More interesting is his charting of the rise of the newer technologies which are mostly selling information or products which are mostly information. The 'profit margin' on many of these things (songs, books, photos, apps etc) is a meaningless concept because there is no marginal cost on creating them. The first one might cost £1,000 but every subsequent copy costs nothing. So how do you handle that in conventional economics? How do you price it? The answer seems to be that the price can only be maintained by the existence of copyright systems - and that there is a tendency for the price to go to zero.

His thesis is that material goods are going the same way - specifically that automation will reduce and reduce the price until it's effectively zero. This argument depends on the Marxist valuation of goods as being the amount of work taken to produce them, which I think is a bit questionable. What is more interesting is that if you automate everything that is currently called 'work', no-one will have any wages and therefore there won't be anyone to sell things to.

I agree, up to a point, but 'tending to zero' doesn't mean 'is zero'. I do agree that automation does imply we shall one day be free of work and on that day our current system of capitalism won't work (no-one in work = no-one to sell to = no market). How we manage the transition to that state will be an interesting journey. ...more

An alright book. One weird thing is despite the title, most of the book is actually about the history of capitalism (and a highly selective one) than about a blueprint for a new economic system. The blueprint part is probably just the last chapter, and even then it's just a series of prescriptions without solid justification. Sure there are parallels between the trends highlighted in the previous chapter and the prescriptions, but it's not very convincing to me. Plus, many of the prescriptions aAn alright book. One weird thing is despite the title, most of the book is actually about the history of capitalism (and a highly selective one) than about a blueprint for a new economic system. The blueprint part is probably just the last chapter, and even then it's just a series of prescriptions without solid justification. Sure there are parallels between the trends highlighted in the previous chapter and the prescriptions, but it's not very convincing to me. Plus, many of the prescriptions are just like "X should be discouraged, Y should be encouraged," etc. and unclear how that can be implemented without convincing a very large number of legislators and elected officials. It's not all bad, the history part is sometimes informative, but IMO too unsystematic to be super useful....more

Mason's intriguing book sniffs through the chaos of a world capitalism racked by a succession of crises which have so badly damaged the project of globalisation.

Plenty of others have done this but most have assumed that somewhere just down the line the system will stabilise and something like the thing intended when Reagan and Thatcher put together their plans for a neoliberal world back in the 1980s will re-emerge.

Mason has something else in mind. He sets out the features which mark the distrMason's intriguing book sniffs through the chaos of a world capitalism racked by a succession of crises which have so badly damaged the project of globalisation.

Plenty of others have done this but most have assumed that somewhere just down the line the system will stabilise and something like the thing intended when Reagan and Thatcher put together their plans for a neoliberal world back in the 1980s will re-emerge.

Mason has something else in mind. He sets out the features which mark the distressed condition of contemporary capitalism – magic ‘fiat’ money, imbalances in trade, savings and investment, and the incompatibility of ‘information goods’ with market mechanisms. Things look bad, but so what? Capitalism has stumbled on hard times before, only for the system to repeat its very trick of reinventing itself and hitting the road for another generation or two of profitable accumulation.

Is it on the cards that this will happen again, and that after capitalism we simply get capitalism 2.0? The author suggests there are good reasons to believe that this might not be the case. To make this argument he calls on the work of Nikolai Kondratieff and his discovery of the 50 year long waves that reveal themselves in the movement of prices since the Middle Ages. For the Russian economist the waves were composed of sets of up- and down- swings in capitalist economies, with each swing being around 25 years in length. During upswings recession were rare; in the down, frequent. The real engine that moved the pendulum across it up- and down- phases was the deployment of new technologies and high capital investment.

According to this theory, the current wave commenced in the 1940s with the technologies and investment that allowed capitalism to recover from the deep depression of the previous decade. The 50 year duration of the Kondratievan long wave predicted another great recession in the 1990s. This didn’t happen.

Mason’s explanation as to why the deep recession predicted at the end of the 50 long wave begins at the halfway point, in 1973, when the upswing was converted into the downswing. High productivity, explicit global rules (based on the Bretton Woods agreement) and the repression of tendencies towards financialisation had provided the driving force for the long period of surging capitalist growth. But by the 1970s investment could no longer increase productivity at the post-war rate. The Bretton Woods arrangement came under attack as governments began to tackle the problem of the uncompetiveness of their economies by devaluing national currencies in order to increase their share of international markets. The relative strength of the working class, achieved through its strong trade unions, closed down the option of an ‘internal devaluation – cutting wages, reducing welfare – as another way of restoring competiveness and as a result a profit squeeze kicked in across the system. Nixon finally delivered the coup de grace to Bretton Woods in August 1971. The new system of floating exchange rates meant that banks were effectively able to generate money out of nothing, leading to a few years of ‘nervous euphoria.’ Reality reasserted itself in January 1973 with a Wall Street crash that saw the collapse of several investment banks. Then came the ‘final straw’ of the oil crisis later that year, in October.

This was the point at which the normal pattern of the long wave was badly disrupted. According to Kondratieff the downswing years are marked by working class resistance to the efforts of capitalists to recoup their losses by eating into the gains won in the form of high wages and social policies that provided for the welfare of citizens. The effect of this was to force capital to find a new model based on higher labour productivity and higher investment. This time round the chosen route was more-or-less the opposite: lower wages and low-value models of production. But this did not open the way to the new kind of capitalism that the right wing ideologues who were backing Thatcher and Reagan during the crucial years of the 1980s had hoped, but rather the mere extension of the old long wave on the basis of stagnant wage growth and the atomisation of the working class.

The ending of the dynamic phase of the long wage in the mid-1970s also ended the restraints that had been placed on the financial sector, which had required its interests to remain subordinate to those goods and services which were creating new value across the system. The new liberty enjoyed by the banks to create more money at will merged with the role that personal debt was playing under the new economic arrangements. The worst effects of the suppression of wage growth for the working class was offset by increased access to credit. For wage earners who owned their own homes this could be underwritten by the inflation of the value of these assets. Serving this volume of indebtedness and asset inflation created more business opportunities for the financial services industry, leading to a situation where, in the case of the United States, over 40 percent of corporate profit was generated by banks, hedge funds and insurance companies.

So, Mason sets out a picture in which capitalism sets out along a well-trodden path which will see it rewarded with 25 good years, 25 poor, and then opening up with a switch to a new higher road with more possibilities being opened up. But on this occasion the second portion of lean years for capital actually worked out quite well, with all the apparent benefits of prosperity still showing up, albeit arising from setbacks born more and more by the working class. The model expanded by pushing outwards into the developing world, creating new opportunities for low-cost, low-value production and services to become established in a workforce that more than doubled in size during this period. To achieve this level of global reach and coordination new technologies did emerge, but unlike those which led to a new phase of capitalist expansion on the orthodox model of past years, this time this were coming into existence which threatened a major disruption of accumulation.

What this new emergence consisted of is set out in a middle section of the book discussing the ‘prophets of post-capitalism’. The key idea is that of ‘infotech’, or information technology. Mason argues that in a highly technologized world infotech – the accumulation of all the technologies that are built into all the goods we consume – is the most value thing about the commodity. It has led to a new approach to manufacturing in which each good has to be intricately modelled before its production is commenced. The bulk of value is in the design segment is its production and only a small portion in what is assembled on the line.

But how much is this infotech stage of production actually worth? Mason introduces us to the work of management guru, Peter Drucker, who first draw attention to the fact that there is no economic theory which accounts for the value of information. This is important because, if the bulk of value is accounted for by information, then from a capitalist point of view growing prosperity must depend on increasing the productivity of the information process. This has to be about the interconnectivity of all the component parts of information. Yet this is something that is already happening but, in large and growing part, on the basis of decidedly non-capitalist principles.

This growing interconnectivity takes place through networks, nowadays facilitated by the effectively free medium of the world wide web. Then, rushing on to Paul Romer’s contribution to this discussion about the value of information, we get introduced to the idea that innovation in productive processes can be reduced to the simple idea of ‘mixing things together in a new way’.

Knowing how to do this involved writing what is effectively a recipe which, having once been written can be used over and over again at no extra cost. The radical idea here, which Mason argues threatens capitalism’s ability to reproduce itself across succeeding waves, is that the most valuable component in a modern good comes, to all intents and purposes, free of charge and downloadable in the internet.

Classical economic theory tells us that the value of a good is the sum total of the value of all the parts of which it is made, either in the form of the new value which emerges from the labour power of the worker, and also the transferred value of the machinery and the ingredients which were used in its making. But what is transferred from the value of the infotech component if this element itself has, being abundantly available, is effectively free?

The task of answering this question is really the core of Mason’s book. He sees the capitalist logic of production – accumulating in order to accumulate – as being threatened by new vitalities in which socially value stuff is offered up free of charge without any need or desire to accumulate further. The clearest example of this development is found in the ‘creative commons’ economy which throws sophisticated products into a pot which can then be picked up and used by anyone with the fancy to do so without paying a fee. Economies move and grow because this stuff is happening in ever large volume, but the evidence for all this creative activity is not to be found in the profits of business concerns. Without value showing up as profits you can’t have capitalism – or at least not indefinitely into the future.

This is not to say that efforts will not be made on the part of those who want to see the current system prevail into the future to restabilise capitalism with profit-making activity at its core. Mason suggests that this will look line the business model operated by companies like Amazon which aim to build up vast information networks of their own out of which profits can be extracted through specialised sales techniques – essentially selling stuff to us on the basis of information about things we have already bought.

Mason talks about the externalities which will work over time to disrupt this attempt to re-establish the stability of profits. Things like climate change and mass migration loom large on this agenda. But a book by an author so conversant with Marxism it seems strange that he glides over any important action on the part of the working class in his scenario for post capitalism. The defeats inflicted on it in the 1970s and after appear to have been final and from which there is no recovery. The proletariat he is interested in is the infotech producing kind, who will wield economic power as much through the creative commons as anything else.

There is a huge amount in thinking in this book which is bound to be of interest to anyone – and there a lot about – who think that the problem of our times is capitalism. He is surely right in his urging that radicals plan their anticapitalism as a project for generations rather than a Bolshevik coup. The new proletariat, labour in lofts and bedsits in creative isolation from others of their kind have to be found a place and a role in the ranks of the revolutionaries. But the picture he offers us is surely partial still, located in the dilemmas of mature capitalist economies that have long since passed into their years of dotage. But if the crisis of today’s capitalism goes to the heart of a globalised, neoliberal system that has drawn the entire planet’s population into its maw, then surely more needs to be said about the ways in which this impacts on the rest of the workers of the world, who are still shackled to production lines and work gangs, and still yearn for the sort of freedom that organised labour once promised them.

The central problem with this worthless book is that Paul Mason doesn't understand economics. He clusters concepts together with as much coherence as a toddler trying to build the Millenium Falcon from a random pile of Lego; much as you might expect from someone who graduated in music and politics, then climbed the greasy pole into television punditry.

Unsurprisingly, as a TV entertainer, what he does grasp well is how to inflame the muddle-headed. Almost every page of Postcapitalism drips bileThe central problem with this worthless book is that Paul Mason doesn't understand economics. He clusters concepts together with as much coherence as a toddler trying to build the Millenium Falcon from a random pile of Lego; much as you might expect from someone who graduated in music and politics, then climbed the greasy pole into television punditry.

Unsurprisingly, as a TV entertainer, what he does grasp well is how to inflame the muddle-headed. Almost every page of Postcapitalism drips bile about the free market system on which his ingrate readers' pampered middle-class lives rely. References to Pinochet's Chile, a sacred totem of leftist indignation, are everywhere. In contrast there is no honest appraisal of the great failed experiment of the 20th century: the utopian communism that gave the world Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, led to the slaughter of tens of millions and the effective enslavement of hundreds of millions more. The chapter entitled "was Marx right?" skips lightly over that uncomfortable reality, focusing instead on how some of the innovation, like the transistor, that helped the free west to its overwhelming economic triumph over collectivism emerged - shock horror - from government military spending. Well, yes, Paul, but it took red-blooded venture capitalism of Silicon Valley to take the transistor to the semiconductor and beyond.

Data is necessarily almost wholly absent from the book, lest it might dawn on the reader just how far living standards have risen, and continue to rise, in the system they protest. On a handful of pages, about one-third of the way in, there a few token charts, apparently to support Paul's rambling thesis. Most people of a sceptical nature will look immediately to the time axes for signs of manipulation; naturally Postcapitalism doesn't disappoint. A chart of world GDP growth ends at the downturn of 2009, ignoring the sharp reversion to normal growth rates that has occurred subsequently. Similarly, a chart of financial sector profits (like every good lefty, Paul hates banks) is cut short at a high-level in 2006, removing the awkward truth that they had large losses in the financial crisis and are still nowhere close to reverting to peak levels. Worst of all, Branko Milanovic's much-reproduced chart of rising income levels globally over the last quarter-century is selectively misinterpreted for a boring well-worn diatribe against the relative success of the top 10% (which, by the way, means you, me and Paul too - go hang your heads in shame). It obfuscates the astonishing statistic in the left side of the chart - the rising out of poverty of hundreds of millions in the developing world; the endlessly-maligned globalisation achieving what Bono-Geldofist aid programs or Naomi-Klein-handwringing never could.

The last chapter "Project Zero" is apparently the clever bit of this book. What we are actually given is a few anecdotes about the emerging free economy. Yup, Wikipedia, Linux and, er, some other thing. The Occam's Razor explanation as to why people devote time to uncommercial activity is of course that rising living standards across the global economy have given more and more people leisure time to fill. Instead Mason extrapolates wildly to a neo-Marxist-buzzword-intensive future in which the networked world will somehow be both "decentralised" with "micro-level participation" yet embrace a massive renationalisation of the economy as prescribed in detail by Comrade Paul.

In summary: total bollocks. If you have read this book, are feeling queasy and need an empirically-based antidote, go read Johan Norberg's wonderful "Progress". Meanwhile pray that Paul Mason never has any influence beyond Channel 4.

A very interesting read! And my first non-fiction book of the year. I do think that this was kind of hard to get through at times (especially when it became very history-heavy) but it brought up so many interesting ideas. I know I'll be thinking about this for a while.

Paul Mason presents strong arguments for the coming slow demise of capitalism, and some good suggestions of what will happen next. I'm not sure of his suggested transition plan, but the face that we need a transition to lessen the harms make sense.

The Good: I found his summary of historic economic theory to be coherent and clear - showing connections among authors and books I had not previously seen, but make a lot of sense. The book was worth reading/listening to for that even if you don't agrPaul Mason presents strong arguments for the coming slow demise of capitalism, and some good suggestions of what will happen next. I'm not sure of his suggested transition plan, but the face that we need a transition to lessen the harms make sense.

The Good: I found his summary of historic economic theory to be coherent and clear - showing connections among authors and books I had not previously seen, but make a lot of sense. The book was worth reading/listening to for that even if you don't agree with the central ideas. His descriptions of the dangers of the current system: financialization, personal and government debt crises, climate change, the 'precariat'(precarious/bullshit jobs), were all worth thinking about as well. Some of his solutions/transition methods - lowering the cost of the necessities of life, sustainability targets in central banks - are worth adopting immediately regardless of the rest of the state of capitalism.

The Bad: I thought the role of regulation in the transition was a bit too hopeful and unrealistic. Some of his economic solutions require adoption wholesale and don't allow for voluntary adoption by smaller movers or on individual scales. Also, he neglects individual contributions while basing much of his argument on individual contributor heavy projects like Wikipedia.

Overall, highly recommended because it inspires thought about how our system works, what its flaws are, and how we can improve and transition into better systems. I'm not sure his recipe is quite the right one, but his arguments are worth thinking about.

"The lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world" –Chesterton said. But there is always the possibility that not even the lost causes could have saved us from the horrors of industrial warfare, mass deportations, labor camps, genocide and other centrally orchestrated disasters.

In this book, the author goes into great detail to vindicate this or that piece of Marxist economics, some well known (the Labor Value Theory, Kondratiev's wave), some obscure (the Fragment on Machines,"The lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world" –Chesterton said. But there is always the possibility that not even the lost causes could have saved us from the horrors of industrial warfare, mass deportations, labor camps, genocide and other centrally orchestrated disasters.

In this book, the author goes into great detail to vindicate this or that piece of Marxist economics, some well known (the Labor Value Theory, Kondratiev's wave), some obscure (the Fragment on Machines, the amateur economics of Rosa Luxemburg...) in what's just your typical journalistic device: simulate depth with detail and breadth with variety. By the end of the book, nothing derives from the previous 200+ pages long appetizer. Just some stuff about stopping climate change, how great Wikipedia is, socializing the financial system, and a caricature of the ruling classes sitting pretty in health clubs around the world. There's even a mention to Gamergate, for god's sake. As a proponent of Universal Basic Income myself, this is the kind of adjacent discourse that I regard as, dare I say it, toxic....more

Not bad, but eventually overreaching. Feels a bit rushed. The main problem is that it totally and utterly fails to explain the lynchpin on which his argument rests. You can't just say "Wikipedia" and be done with it...

Left-wing politics has lost all credibility in economic science since the victory of Free-Market Capitalism post-1989. Turning their attention to environmentalism, human rights, social justice and anti-austerity, socialists of today do not question the basic premise that private property and a market system for the distribution of goods are indispensable to economic growth; the only question is to what extent the state should temper its excesses. But in the last year distinguished economists havLeft-wing politics has lost all credibility in economic science since the victory of Free-Market Capitalism post-1989. Turning their attention to environmentalism, human rights, social justice and anti-austerity, socialists of today do not question the basic premise that private property and a market system for the distribution of goods are indispensable to economic growth; the only question is to what extent the state should temper its excesses. But in the last year distinguished economists have started to question the future of Neo-Liberalism, and, in Thomas Piketty and Paul Mason, the left have found strident voices armed with an impressive understanding of economic theory. It seems the first anti-orthodox economists have finally emerged after the shock of the 2008/09 global recession. Mason is perhaps the most articulate prophet of doom since the credit crunch exposed the hideous excesses of the finance sector and destroyed the idea of the efficient market hypotheses. In his view Neo-Liberalism (aka Free-Market Capitalism) as we know it is in decline and cannot survive in its current guise. No matter what your views this book is superbly written, unimaginable in its scope, and unwilling to contemplate anything but the complete breakdown of a socio-economic system that is now synonymous with democracy and has come to symbolise meritocracy, consumer power and competition (which is, of course, disputed by Capitalism’s critics).So what has changed in the last 10 years? The first point is that IT has reduced the need for work. Furthermore, Information goods are harming the market’s ability to price goods, and monopolies are clinging to profit by deliberately under-utilising information via intellectual property rights and patents. Even more important, spontaneous collaborative production is rising up unlike anything before. As Mason points out: ‘The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by 27,000 volunteers, for free, abolishing the encyclopaedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3 billion a year in revenue.’ To put it more bluntly, ‘The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial.’Yet, according to Mason, there is way out for Neo-Liberalism. Developed nations need to end ‘Financialization’ of the economy by an orderly exit from QE and avoid eroding the real value of government debt with inflation. They must also suppress the dominance of high finance, and use interest rate rises to mitigate early signs of a bubble (a clear criticism of Alan Greenspan). This will be no easy task in the democratic age, but is nothing compared to the level of international co-operation required to save capitalism. At the heart of this is the necessity of stabilising fiat currencies and smoothing out global imbalances, preferably with a new global currency managed by the IMF and with the Chinese Yuan as a fully tradable reserve currency. Yet this could prove impossible because, as Mason forecasts, ‘The currencies of surplus countries would rise, and China, India and the rest would have to give up their cheap labour advantage.’ The most likely outcome is a complete breakdown of globalisation and a race to the bottom as nations try to de-globalise quicker than their rivals.But what will post-Capitalism look like and how will the transition be managed? The author is on more dubious ground here and is less clear about the future. If anything, his conclusions are extreme left-wing. Having re-read the book to summarise the arguments, I am still not convinced the iPod generation from Silicon Valley and Shoreditch, with their ultra-liberal views on sexuality and refusal to pay for information goods, are the gravediggers of capitalism. You can feel yourself cringing when Mason advises us that ‘we need to be unashamed utopians.’ Take his idea for ending the low-wage workforce in the service sector that Neo-Liberalism has managed to create: Can anybody conceive of a time when the British government gives 51 million adults a basic income of £6,000 for simply being of working age? Of course it will be paid for out of general taxation, in addition to a guaranteed minimum wage of £18,000 per annum. The author’s belief that such an extreme re-distribution will force innovation and spur entrepreneurship by challenging the most intellectually-adept to collaborate for the end goal of a fully-automated production economy is a bit like a developing African country wishing it shared porous borders with aggressive adversaries in the hope it will force them to carve out a world class military.Aside from the lunacy of such proposals, Mason is right to identify the three biggest threats facing Neo-Liberalism today: global warming, an ageing population and migration. It’s clear allowing industrial companies to trade carbon permits will not solve the need to lower carbon emissions. The author’s solution is heavier taxation followed by the nationalisation of the entire carbon-polluting sector if no progress is made by 2050. This is not a new idea, and to most people will look like a retrograde policy, although given the severity of the global warming threat, nationalisation might be the best (or least worse) option to force corrective behaviour on polluters. But anybody can see that China and India will defend their position as developing nations to moderate their climate change policies. Has the author considered this possibility? One look at the sclerotic European Union shows how hard it is for countries to co-ordinate policy amongst advanced democracies and new nation states, and it provides no hope that global co-operation will converge on an agreed plan to cut carbon emissions other than through the usual treaties that produce a lot of goodwill and a lack of meaningful progress.What is noticeable throughout this book is Mason’s reluctance to acknowledge the possibility of internecine strife (possibly even civil war) in his vision for the end of capitalism. Consider his argument for writing off debt in the developed world. The author proposes nationalising all central banks and keeping interest rates below the level of inflation to erode the real value of government debt. Apart from being an irresponsible policy it will also corrode trust in the international markets between investors and governments. Would anybody want to buy British gilt-edged securities (aka bonds) if the government of the day announced its intention to cheat in paying back the debt? A further scrutiny shows how Mason is also keen to go back to the mixed-economy of the 1948-1967 era when the Bretton-Woods system of international currency exchange provided fixed rates and strong controls on cross-border capital. In other words, he would prefer the de-globalisation that comes with forcing citizens to invest only in their nation’s debt. The balance of payments would become the most important focus of macro-economics and holidaymakers would be limited in the amount of foreign currency they could take out of the country. These might be benign examples, but the encroachment of the state would put individual liberty under threat once again. Mason clearly believes that the state should provide freedom from poverty and want in addition to guaranteeing our negative freedoms – a classic socialist argument that downplays the importance of individual autonomy in the face of the all-knowing, benevolent state. However impressive his progressive views, the sovereignty of the individual does not come high on the author’s agenda.Yet some of Mason’s extreme suggestions are understandable when you consider the ageing population in the developed world. By 2050 sixty percent of developed nations could be on the verge of bankruptcy, with pension funds being most at risk in their search for an acceptable yield. Faced with minimal returns on government debt, there’s no reason to doubt they’ll be victims of the next bubble. Likewise, the flood of migration from the third world will continue at pace, putting more pressure on scarce resources. The reality is that two-thirds of the world’s population are living in ‘Non-Marxian’ poverty e.g. location is responsible for their plight rather than lack of amenities. Whatever the future, is certainly looks more violent and less rosy for democracy. Introducing a basic income of £6,000 for all working-age people will encourage even more impoverished Muslims to queue at Calais in the hope of entering a country that pays them for simply existing. Imagine the tension this will create: Modern European history shows quite clearly that the electorate in countries under severe social strain tend to vote for extreme right or extreme left parties (mainly the former instead of the latter). Perhaps capitalism, for all its flaws and unwillingness to promote itself as a utopian or even morally superior system might just be the best option to keep the peace, even if that means slow growth and stagnation for decades to come.Whether we ever move to the Wiki State or ‘ban intellectual property’ becomes a new slogan for the iPod generation is hard to say, but Mason sees the future through the prism of the past, with the state taking back the power it lost during the Conservative revolutions of the 1980s. His gleeful prediction of the demise of the 1% in the last few pages might be a bit premature, but you can guarantee there will be individuals sharpening their knives for the fall of capitalism. Yet, unlike the author, I cannot see this happening in a peaceful way, nor can I imagine the leaders of his revolution resisting the temptation to govern in the name of an enlightened dictatorship for the ‘common good.’Nevertheless, this is the probably the most important book written this year and will stimulate your cognitive thinking for days on end. Whether you’re an avowed capitalist or nostalgic communist, the debate has shifted. And despite his extreme left suggestions, Mason has fired a warning shot to neo-Liberals everywhere. This is certainly not the end of history, but the beginning of a new battle between competing ideologies, even if it’s yet to be identified by the masses and those who govern in our name.

This ranks up there among the “must read” books that help to explain exactly where we stand in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. This was a brilliant snap-shot of economic history by a thoroughly knowledgeable leader in this field. To even suggest that we can charge full speed ahead with the same neo-liberalism strategy of unregulated markets and unchecked free trade is completely insane. I’m not sure that capitalism has a finite lifespan as he suggests but I certainly enjoyed reading hiThis ranks up there among the “must read” books that help to explain exactly where we stand in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. This was a brilliant snap-shot of economic history by a thoroughly knowledgeable leader in this field. To even suggest that we can charge full speed ahead with the same neo-liberalism strategy of unregulated markets and unchecked free trade is completely insane. I’m not sure that capitalism has a finite lifespan as he suggests but I certainly enjoyed reading his views on the subject.

I think that when the final autopsy is performed on the 2008 meltdown a lot more blame will be placed on GWB’s two completely failed wars in the Middle East. I can’t believe how few economists point to that as one of the causes of our present malaise. Just consider it for a second. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps trillions on weapons and systems that only benefited the few assholes who produced them (people like Dick Cheney). The arms industry doesn’t employ a lot of people and all of the rewards are pocketed by a few. The soldiers that fight the wars work at almost poverty levels and then had to return to a devastated economy that not only couldn’t give them a decent job but also refused to look after their mental and physical well-being.

We also can't forget that oil in the war years spiked to $150 a barrel as OPEC nations used this as an excuse to gouge the rest of the world. Energy prices during the Bush administrations was well above what gas has been in the 8 years since he left office.

Starting with the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s we have devolved into a "haves and have nots" society and Trump is dead set on making that even more of a problem so I hardly think this is all the fault of a system which is neither good or bad inherently, it is only as good as we make it.

I agree with the author 100% that need to rush desperately head first into a new economy of innovation and one based on renewable energy. If you aren’t already going in that direction as a nation you are just freaking doomed. ...more

I was fascinated by some of the economic models Paul Mason discusses, such as Kondratieff cycles and Marx's labour theory of value. Ultimately, though, I was unconvinced by his arguments.

There are three reasons for this. His sometimes mystifying logical leaps of faith, his oversimplification of technology and his reliance on state-based solutions.

Over and over again in this book, Mason would build an interesting argument only to make a leap to a conclusion that isn't entirely supported by his arI was fascinated by some of the economic models Paul Mason discusses, such as Kondratieff cycles and Marx's labour theory of value. Ultimately, though, I was unconvinced by his arguments.

There are three reasons for this. His sometimes mystifying logical leaps of faith, his oversimplification of technology and his reliance on state-based solutions.

Over and over again in this book, Mason would build an interesting argument only to make a leap to a conclusion that isn't entirely supported by his argument. Examples are his arguments around the changes in technology, characterising almost everything that results in jobs as the 'gig' economy and coming to the conclusions that for this to be tenable we'd eventually have to make kissing illegal. Yes, that conclusion was tongue-in-cheek, but also show some of the very twisted and unconvincing logic that Mason often resorts to.

As is probably clear from the above, Mason's view of technology is often oversimplified. To be fair, his view of technology is balanced, he see both pros and cons. But the pros are as worrying as the cons. A great example of this is his section on models. He seems to expect a nearly perfect model and advises "model first, then act". And while this is good advice, there is no evidence of feedback. There is no understanding that, to quote George Box, "all models are wrong but some are useful." It is worrying and it is a thread that pervades the entire book. The economic models he describes as being right 100% of time. Marx's "labour theory of value", for instance, is presented this way. It's problematic, though, since this doesn't seem to account for some of the challenges the modern world faces, such as the gap between women's wages and mens..

Finally, I was taken aback by Mason's statement, again without any real support, that the solution to climate must be a state-based solution. If the last few years have taught me anything, it is that state-based solutions cannot be relied upon, that governments do not last forever and that democracy is a challenge. Towards the end of the book, Mason does caveat this by saying that his state-based enthusiasm is only one of many possible solutions, but those are only covered in a few hasty sentences.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this book. While I wasn't entirely convinced, it challenged may of my preconceptions. And challenging the world I've come to believe in is something that I appreciate from any book....more

I bought this from Bookmarks after some thugs smashed up the store. As a non-socialist I wanted to read something which wasn't a regurgitation of thinking from the 19th/20th century- in that, this book delivered.

The historical context was very useful, providing a good grounding in the ideas and critiques used later in the book. The central 'project zero' idea was interesting- I can agree with most but dispute the need for such centralisation, the route to implementing it being clearly rooted inI bought this from Bookmarks after some thugs smashed up the store. As a non-socialist I wanted to read something which wasn't a regurgitation of thinking from the 19th/20th century- in that, this book delivered.

The historical context was very useful, providing a good grounding in the ideas and critiques used later in the book. The central 'project zero' idea was interesting- I can agree with most but dispute the need for such centralisation, the route to implementing it being clearly rooted in the author's own politics. Towards the end there is a line to the effect of 'a conservative route could exist, and more power to it', which was interesting having read the book thinking that centre-right politics (in the UK at least) is capable of achieving much of what was being called for, though in a more decentralised fashion. Indeed, the author almost grudgingly sees capitalism itself as having laid the groundwork for this utopian vision, and so where we differ is on whether it's been the "seeds of its own destruction" or a necessary ingredient in achieving near post-scarcity.

I felt at times as though there was an over-emphasis on feeling over facts in some places- while generally well-supported and referenced throughout, there were occasional glib comments which were unsupported by evidence or slightly misleading (not sufficient to derail the main thrust, but jarring).

At times it felt as though the need to replace the old system overrode the need to create a new one, which I believe came through in the writing and accounts for the majority of the issues I had, but the overall piece was illuminating and accessible. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would enjoy a book from a socialist bookshop....more

It’s much easier for today’s left to signal their discontent by demanding the impossible or blatantly undesirable (a return to socialisms of the past) than it is for them to grapple with the question of socialism’s role in a capitalist system not quite disastrous enough to actually revolt against.

Paul Mason acknowledges this and attempts to answer that question – with all the profundity of damp sawdust. These are three hundred pages that state the obvious. He simply unifies some of the most visIt’s much easier for today’s left to signal their discontent by demanding the impossible or blatantly undesirable (a return to socialisms of the past) than it is for them to grapple with the question of socialism’s role in a capitalist system not quite disastrous enough to actually revolt against.

Paul Mason acknowledges this and attempts to answer that question – with all the profundity of damp sawdust. These are three hundred pages that state the obvious. He simply unifies some of the most visible ideas of progressivist politics (a basic income, the suppression of monopolies, etc.) under an ambitious-sounding title. There’s no philosophical dimension, no historical sweep, just bags of mundane journalistic analysis.

Influential thinkers throughout history have emphasised the gravity of present crises, balanced with an indefatigable sense of possibility, and such a project requires immense imaginative power. Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek’s #ACCELERATE comes much closer to re-energising socialism, but their manifesto is light on detail and lacks a global perspective. Mason, in painfully colourless prose, merely offers the idea of a ‘Wiki-State’, flimsy to say the least... why don't Wikipedia pay their editors? Why do they continually beg their visitors for donations? What of the quasi-egalitarianism of Google, et al? Mason asks us to ‘imagine if, on induction day for new employees, McDonald’s had to give you a one-hour course in trade unionism.’ But, in such a world, where would neoliberal avarice end and ‘Postcapitalism’ begin? It isn’t clear.

Beyond the masses of research there isn’t much – not worth anyone’s time....more

This is a remarkable book. It has been a long and sometimes arduous read. For my efforts I have learned much about the history of capitalism (approached by the author from many different angles and voices).

My understanding of the current state of affairs economical, political and social, was fragmented and emotional. After reading this book it stays emotional but I have a coherent story about how we got where we are.

The author furthermore names and places rightly all the major blocks of our puzzThis is a remarkable book. It has been a long and sometimes arduous read. For my efforts I have learned much about the history of capitalism (approached by the author from many different angles and voices).

My understanding of the current state of affairs economical, political and social, was fragmented and emotional. After reading this book it stays emotional but I have a coherent story about how we got where we are.

The author furthermore names and places rightly all the major blocks of our puzzle: network against hierarchy, information technology, a world of free products and services, climate change, cleptocracies, demographic issues, how deep transitions are, the works.

And then he talks about what is about to come. He sounds less self-assured about that but, anyway, he offers a reasonable and energy-charged forecast about the kind of world that we could have.

I keep one thing in mind. No transition will ever begin in earnest until we (the crowd) are able to imagine the world of the future. And right now we aren't....more

I enjoyed this book because I'm very interested in what Paul Mason calls postcapitalism, which overlaps with terms such as the sharing economy, gig economy and others. His main thesis is that, contrary to popular belief, postcapitalism is actually not compatible with capitalism or neoliberalism as it removes the market from many transactions.

Although I found this book worthwhile, well written and extremely informative, it actually covered quite a bit of material that I wasn't really expecting.I enjoyed this book because I'm very interested in what Paul Mason calls postcapitalism, which overlaps with terms such as the sharing economy, gig economy and others. His main thesis is that, contrary to popular belief, postcapitalism is actually not compatible with capitalism or neoliberalism as it removes the market from many transactions.

Although I found this book worthwhile, well written and extremely informative, it actually covered quite a bit of material that I wasn't really expecting. Mason is fascinated with Marx and the Soviet Union and I'm not sure how relevant the in-depth forays into economics are to the main point. When he got into a really dense section about Kondratiev's Wave Theory, I felt like I was reading an economics textbook.

I think Mason is quite good at explaining such topics but I also sensed that his knowledge and fascination with these areas makes him want to talk about them at length even if they're not directly related to the main issue: i.e. what exactly is postcapitalism, what will it look like and what are some of its likely consequences? I mean let's face it: no one really knows if "waves" are real or not, and, if they are, what stage we're in and so forth. It's pure speculation, along with most economic theories. Similarly, I don't really get Mason's attachment to Labor Theory, which, despite his lengthy explanations, doesn't seem particularly relevant to a world in which conventional employment is rapidly fading away.

I found Mason's discussions on possible solutions to issues such as climate change and an aging population, mainly the last section, to be more on-topic. Overall, Postcapitalism is a solid contribution to the growing body of material on postcapitalism. I should say (in case it's not obvious) that my own critique is probably rooted in a bias against traditional political and economic theories of all stripes.

I really enjoyed reading this and planned to give it 5 stars, but the last chapter fell flat. Mason spends the first 90% of the book providing historical context for the ideas he is advocating...only to quickly sprint through the ideas themselves in the last 20-30 pages. I would have loved more detail and justification of why they would resolve the problems he describes and how they could be implemented. Despite this, I would still absolutely recommend the book, especially to people such as myseI really enjoyed reading this and planned to give it 5 stars, but the last chapter fell flat. Mason spends the first 90% of the book providing historical context for the ideas he is advocating...only to quickly sprint through the ideas themselves in the last 20-30 pages. I would have loved more detail and justification of why they would resolve the problems he describes and how they could be implemented. Despite this, I would still absolutely recommend the book, especially to people such as myself who were skeptical of the title. ...more